Problem Child
by Nachtfuchs
Summary: AU/ Jackson Bennett has just been kicked out of school ... again. Now his mother sees it fit to send him off to 'dullsville' somewhere in Minnesota to live with a father, who is a total stranger to him. But once he arrives there, he is only met by a gruff ranger and a boisterous toymaker. There is also that strange boy living up the street, who seems to know more than he let's on.
1. Prolog

**Problem Child**

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

\- Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper -

 _ **Prolog**_

Have you ever thought about how you gonna die? I certainly never have. Not really.

Being a thirteen year old boy gives you the arrogant privilege to belief you are invincible. Untouchable, uncatchable and absolutely unbeatable. It has to do with all those hormones flooding your body. That's what my biology teacher Mr. Eaton said anyway.

If I ever thought about it, I figured I would go in a heroic act. Saving the world or at the very least my home town from an alien attack or some equally great danger. They would build a statue in my honor and name an official holiday after me. Jackson Day! Well now, that sounds grand, doesn't it?

But who am I kidding. They won't name a holiday after a juvenile delinquent. If I get real lucky they will discover my body when spring comes around or maybe not. My murderer knows how to commit a crime. He had tried it before. However, I could read it in his eyes, as he was staring at me from the edge of the frozen lake, he would make sure his victim was dead this time.

I felt the ice cracking beneath my feet. Shifting ever so slightly as I tried to move. Any second now I would plumped through the surface and that would be that. My murderer wouldn't even need to get his hands dirty.

If only I hadn't chosen to face him alone. Great, how such insight always seems to come, when I am already head over heels in a heap of trouble.

It is amazing how much trouble you can get yourself into, if you work at it. Some opportunities are just too perfect to miss. You see, I lack that natural mechanism, which tells you when you are supposed to fight and when you have to run. Or like certain someone told me:

"A touch of fear, which urges you to vigilance. "

Cocky bastard would always use such big words just to annoy me. I hate that about him, but I hate it even more that he was right.

Well, there is an upside to my current predicament (a word I learned from him, too). Now I won't have to face his smug grin and the inevitable I-told-you-so.

Ah shucks! Who am I kidding? I'd take his boastful lecture if it meant not to die.

* * *

Hi, there! I have been out of commission for quite a while and I wanted to write something not Fairy Tail related (and hopefully finish the story this time). It's the first time I use the first-person perspective, so tell how you liked it. I know it's quite short, still constructive criticism would be very appriciated!

See you next chapter!


	2. One–My ticket to the Middle of Nowhere

**One – My ticket to the Middle of Nowhere**

It was a dark and stormy afternoon early in November and I was making my journey to Big Root, a small and, I had no doubt, extremely boring town somewhere in the wilderness of Minnesota. You could say my mood was as gloomy as the weather.

The plane had been tossed side to side, up and down by some lashing winds for the last fifteen minutes. A woman a few rows in front of me squeaked whenever there was a sudden drop or lurch. Somewhere behind me I could hear some poor sod puking his guts out. I could smell it too. There was also a baby way up front crying and wailing and not stopping even for one second.

I wasn't scared as such, but those turbulences had turned my first flying experience into an annoying and uncomfortable ride. I had chosen the window seat, hoping to see the world from above for the first time. So much for that. The only things visible were the clouds and the occasional water drops streaming past on the glass. It was disappointing. Every time I turned to the window I was greeted by waves of misty gray and the reflection of my pitiful mug.

I couldn't even meet my own eyes right now. More so, because when I looked too long I couldn't help seeing my brother Jamie in my own reflection. He was all but ten and the most resourceful and imaginative boy I knew. We look alike, everybody says so. Same tousled brown hair and matching brown eyes. You wouldn't believe we are only half-brothers. The main difference between us is that Jamie is a good kid. Me on the other hand - not so much. If such a thing as Santa and his Naughty List existed, my name would be way up top. Underlined. Thrice.

I checked the time on my wrist watch. Another jolt of guilt passed through me. The watch had been given to me by Jamie as a token before I left. It was a washed mix of blue and red with a slightly crooked Superman symbol. Jamie had known Mom wouldn't be able to afford the original he had seen in the comic book store, so he had made do. He had spent hours carefully taking apart his old watch, repainting it and drawing the symbol on the background.

Jamie had given me one of his greatest treasures and what had I given him – A cast and a lost tooth.

 _Great,_ I thought looking at the clock hands, _just about another hour of self-pity before the plane lands._

And that wouldn't even mean the end of my journey. In Minneapolis I would have to board another plane towards Bunyan, where I would meet my biological father for the first time ever.

I groaned loudly. This was without doubt one of worst days of my life.

"Everything all right, hon'?" drawled Jane, my very own flight attendant, from the seat next to me.

By my guess she was probably just a couple of years younger than my mom, thirty maybe thirty-two. I love my mom and she can look nice if she tries, but the woman next to me was a real natural beauty. Without the slightest trace of make-up she looked like two or three famous actresses. Her dark hair was long and floated around her like storm clouds. I was sure she knew how good she looked and what kind of effect she had on people. She had walked down the aisle in all her tall glory like she owned the plane and the first thing she told me was: "Boy, you may call me Jane. Not Ms. J or Mis'ess and never ever ma'am, understood? Good, then we will have a pleasant flight together."

The plane was absolutely under-booked - even though the ruckus around me made me think otherwise - so the chief steward had told her to keep an eye on me. Right now she was seemingly busy skimming through a Get Lost Magazine, not even looking my way.

Having her around, watching over me (or not) wasn't some kind of privilege. It was a stupid airline rule, because I was still thirteen and not allowed to travel alone. I wasn't enjoying her company, beauty or not, neither was Jane enjoying mine. Her long yet lovely face showed that all too clear. Calling me hon' sounded like an insult coming from her.

"Why?" I threw back, hoping to sound airy.

Jane looked over and fixed me with her strange eyes. They were hazel, but under the cabin lights they had a silver sheen to them. For a second Jane's face creased into something that could have been a warm smile, however it was gone so fast that I doubted it was ever there.

"You look troubled," she explained matter-of-fact, before turning back to her magazine.

"You got that the wrong way around," I muttered. I looked at the Superman watch again. Thinking of Jamie and how I had messed up everything again.

"Did I?" she drawled again.

"Yeah," I snarled at her, suddenly angered by her indifference. "I'm not troubled. I am trouble."

"Oh, really now? Enlighten me," she said, the drawl almost gone from her voice. I imagined hearing a little bit of real interest beneath her whatever-attitude. Maybe that's just what I wanted to believe though, that someone – anyone - even if it was this strange and beautiful lady, would listen to my side of the story.

"You see, it's not that I get into trouble on purpose, but trouble usually finds me. Like I am natural magnet for disasters," I said with resent for myself. I couldn't look Jane in the face while I talked. Instead I kept staring at the back of the seat in front of me. My hands had started on their own to move in wild gestures as I talked. This always happened when I got agitated. There was no helping it.

"Most of my teachers put me in the category trouble maker right from the get-go. Must be something about the way I look at them or the way I talk. I don't know and I tried everything, but I just screw up over and over again. Sometimes I deserve it, alright. But - but most of times it's like, should anything bad happen at school the finger is sure to be pointed at me – Jackson Bennett! Thank you very much! I have after-school detention almost every week and have been kicked out of four schools over the past five years."

"A real bad boy, aren't you?" said Jane with a sly grin. The magazine lay forgotten in her lap. She had turned towards me. One elbow on the armrest to comfortably cup her chin with her perfectly manicured hand.

"Tell me Jackson, what did you do? Go on, entertain me!" she urged.

I thought - What did I have to lose? At worst she could roll her eyes at my pitiful story. Maybe she would laugh at me, heck, I probably deserved it. But so what? Jane and I would part ways at the next airport and would never see each other again. Hopefully.

There were a lot of things boiling up inside of me and here I had the perfect opportunity to let it all out.

"First time was in fourth grade," I told her. "We had show and tell. So I wanted to do something impressive. There was this real nasty cat in our neighborhood. We called him Ol'Tab and no kid dared to go near him. So I spend an entire afternoon chasing him around until I caught him. He scratched me bloody before I finally had him stuffed in a cardboard box. I took him to school next day, but he got real cranky during the first period and my math teacher, Mrs. Andrews, noticed. She told me to open the box. I said I'd rather not. She got angry and finally opened it herself. Ol'Tab shot from the box and clawed her face. "

Jane snorted and then gave a delighted laugh. It was a charming sound. It threw me right off track and made me blush furiously.

"Clawed her face!" she giggled.

"There were no permanent scars," I said meekly.

"And the other times?" She was still smiling, like she was seeing me in a new light and I have to admit, that it felt real good to be at the center of her attention. Somehow I wanted to please her.

"That was in fifth grade computer science. We learned how to copy and paste. I made a whole document that was a good 20.000 pages long, by just coping and pasting the word FUN over and over. At the end of the class I hit save and it crashed all the computers in the school. Honestly I had no idea that could happen."

"And in sixth grade there was this guy Spike - a real jock, always carrying a basketball around. His favorite game was Hit-Jack. So one day we were waiting in front of the science classroom and he throws the ball at me again. I duck and the ball bounces off the wall behind me and back at Spike, but it doesn't hit him. No – it hits the fish tank next to him. The glass shards sent Spike and two off his friends to the hospital. Three others had to see the nurse. Totally not my fault, but I got blamed anyway."

"Finally, last Monday Mr. Ems, my history teacher, had asked us to name some famous explorers. He turned to me and said: Jackson, why don't you try to answer a question for once?

I had promised my Mom I would do my best this year, keep my head low, study hard and so on. But I had only gotten D's and E's since the start of school. I started feeling cranky and frustrated. So I just snapped and said: Jeez, maybe the Internet Explorer and Dora! He didn't think it was funny. I got detention for smart-mouthing and had to clean the class room after school. Mr. Ems said he would be in his office across the hall and I had to be done in an hour. He gave me bucket and a rag, then left to play Candy Crush or whatever.

You know what a lava lamp is, right? There was one on the side board where they kept the old history books. It must have been from the 70's and I had always wondered if it would still work. So I plucked it in and, knowing that it would take a bit before those blobs go up, I just started with the cleaning in the meantime. After an hour the red blobs were going up and down nicely. Only thing that worried me was that strange noise the lamp was making. A kind of buzzing sound. The smart thing would have been to switch the darn thing off, but I didn't. Mr. Ems called me and I walked over to his offices. Just as I walked through his door there was a loud BANG – the whole classroom was covered with this stuff. Mr. Ems went stark raving mad of course. He dragged me to the headmaster, who called my Mom and now I have arson added to my records."

My hands were trembling by the time I finished. I hadn't even realized how hopping mad I was about the last incident. How my utter incompetence to do the smart thing irritated me.

"Tough luck, kid," said Jane after some time. I was surprised to find her looking at me with something that could only be described as compassion. "You and I, we have a lot in common. We mess things up a lot."

"You don't look like screw-up to me," I blurted out. "I mean you are -"

"Beautiful?"

"Confident," I interjected.

This time her face broke into a real smile that had all the warmth of a summer day. I felt myself blush again.

"Maybe I am," she said. "But that is no warranty for success or happiness. You don't believe me do you? It can truly be a curse. When I was your age I didn't think so of course. I was a head-strong and surely spiteful little brat, bursting with all the self-confidence in the world and no sense of caution whatsoever. My grades were disastrous and I performed some pretty reckless acts. But that was the fun of it. Sounding familiar, Jackson?"

Jane winked at me. I felt she wasn't playing me false. Not even a bit. Still, it felt weird how a complete stranger understood me better than my own mother, who had been a straight "A" student and thought that things would get better if only I tried hard enough.

"The things my best friend and I did …. ," Jane went on. "Once our class went to the local museum and there was this little accident involving the ten foot replica of an ax. Long story short – We kind of beheaded Babe the blue ox. The incident earned us a life-long ban form the museum."

"Wow," I said truly impressed, "were you expelled?"

"No, our headmaster believed in second chances. Even if it was the seventh second chance. I presume your latest expulsion is the reason why you are traveling to Bunyan?"

"No – I mean yes," I lied. I saw no reason to tell her the whole story. She didn't need to know about the accident.

"Staying with some relatives?"

Glad she wasn't probing into the matter, I latched onto this new subject.

"With my biological father. He hadn't been what you call in the picture. Left us when I was just three years old, to travel the world or something."

"And you hold this against him?"

"Yes – no …. I am not sure. I don't remember him. Not really. I mean I was just a little kid. Can't say I ever missed him much and he didn't seem all too eager to keep in touch. He promised to send postcards from all the places he visited, though."

My Mom didn't talk about my real father, but sometimes the memory of him seemed to sneak up on her and she would get all misty eyed, whisper things like: Perhaps he will call someday.

She didn't mean my Dad – I mean Adam – with that. Adam was dead. He had died on duty five years ago.

Since then Mom hadn't been the same. During the day she was all smiles and laughter. Going about her work and caring for my little sister Sophie, Jamie and me.

At night I could hear her cry sometimes. Jamie and Sophie didn't know and there was no need to tell them. I preferred to pretend I didn't hear either, because most of the times, I knew, me messing up was the cause of her heartache.

Suddenly I realized how quiet it had gotten around me. The plane wasn't shaking, whirring and whining anymore. No crying or squeaking or retching. Everything had settled down around me, but I still felt like a hurricane was raging inside of me.

I looked up to find Jane starring at me. Reflexively I said: "What?"

"I said, that it sounds nice," Jane repeated."And did he?"

"Did who what?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes at me and said: "Your father. Did he send you postcards?"

"Oh - yeah, my mom would read them to me when I was younger and it felt exiting to have someone sending mail from exotic places. But I didn't think of him as my father. Adam, my Mom's husband, was the only one I ever called Dad. They married shortly after my father left. He was awesome - worked as a firefighter … He was as real a father for me as one could be."

"I'm glad," Jane said, with more relieve you'd expect from a person you just met. Strange really, like it seemed a great burden had been lifted from her conciseness by my last words. It was weird.

"You know" she said with a faraway look on her face, "my own father promised - promised on his soul- he would return to me. Then he left to war and never returned."

Now that made me totally uncomfortable. Grieving people do this to most people, I guess. I didn't know what to say, so I just went for the phrase I had heard people say over and over at Adam's funeral.

"My condolence?" _Jeez, I hadn't intended to come out like this._ "I mean I'm sorry an' all …"

"Oh no, he isn't bodily dead," clarified Jane, with an undertone that told me clearly she wished otherwise. There was pure anger seething through her words. "Something happened over there and whatever had returned home wasn't my father anymore. He had become savage through and through. He shot J - "

She stopped herself, one hand pressed against her mouth as realization seemed to wash over her. I could see she was close to tears.

"I am sorry, Jackson! I shouldn't have – forget what I said, please! You want something to drink? Coke sound good?"

Jane was on her feet before I could say anything and stormed down the aisle. She made a sharp right turn and vanished inside the toilet.

Definitely weird.

I just hoped that if she came back, she wouldn't be crying anymore. I just can't deal with sad people and serious moments. That's why I was never able to comfort Mom. I mean really comfort her. Well, in the time after Adam's death I had tried to make her feel better by telling jokes and goofing around. It worked or so I thought. When I got older I realized that her laughing at my antics was more like motherly duty - like she was doing it for my sake. So I stopped and sometimes I see her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. Worried and at loss.

I know what she must be thinking – What will become of him?

Heck, if I knew.

Jane returned five minutes later with two cans of coke and thankfully back to her boisterous self. We both pretended that her emotional outburst never happened. We talked about movies and stuff. Kept overall to the safe small-talk topics and made the rest of the flight as pleasant as possible.

Only sometimes that faraway look would creep back onto her face. Startling me for a second, but it was gone as soon as it came. Like fast passing clouds on a sunny day.

When we landed in Minneapolis Jane offered to chaperone my transfer to the next gate. I was somehow glad she did. I had grown to like her, despite her initial rudeness. Also it felt kinda great to be seen with such a beautiful woman and she kept me on track. Jane guided me through the crowds of people towards my final destination.

I was beginning to feel anxious and hungry. So in an last attempt to stall, I offered to treat her to a nice burger. She told me if we wouldn't hurry, the flight would leave without me.

"So what," I told her."If I had to choose, I'd stay right here with you. For like ever."

It wasn't meant to be in any way romantic. I blushed at my choice of words nonetheless. But Jane was determined to get me on that plane to Bunyan.

We made it to the gate with barely five minutes to spare. A plump, middle aged stewardess named Molly was waiting for me. She was that bustling-aunt type, with curly blond hair and very red lips. The first thing she did was pinching me in the cheek. Funny, how woman around her age tend to do that.

"What a handsome lad you are," she coed. "Come along, sonny! Don't want to make the other passengers wait, now do we."

Molly gave a girly giggle and patted me on the shoulder. I cast a pleading look to Jane. She just rolled her eyes at my misery.

"Chin up, Jackson!" Jane said with a mocking grin.

I didn't want her to leave me alone with this woman or the prospect of having to face my real father at the end of the next flight. Jane had seemed to understand, but I knew stalling would get me nowhere.

I held out my right hand for her shake. It felt like the proper, adult-thing to do. Like we were equals. Jane didn't hesitate. Her grip was sure and strong.

"So long, Jane" I said.

"Farewell, Jackson," she answered.

She didn't let go of my hand and I felt the situation tipping from casual to serious bordering on weird. That look appeared on her face again.

"Jackson, promise me you won't do anything rash or reckless no matter what!"

Her eyes and her grip seemed to have turned to steel, binding until I did what she asked.

"I – I will." To make it more official I held up my left hand and intoned:"I, Jackson Bennett, solemnly swear that I shall not do anything rash and reckless."

"No matter what?"

"Yeah, no matter what," I repeated.

Jane scrutinized me for another moment before giving my hand a final shake and stepping back.

"Remember: Chin Up!" she said and punched me playfully on the shoulder, before turning around and leaving me without another word.

"Come on now, sonny" said Molly in her sing-song voice. I had forgotten about her presence altogether and as she coaxed down the gangway, I hoped against all odds that someday I would meet Jane again to tell her I was able to keep true to my words.

It seems, the odds were never entirely in my favor.

* * *

 **There - all done! So how was it? Critisism and comments are appreciated as always! See you next chapter!**


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